


Painted and Blue

by Abraxas (Qlippoth)



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M, Zutara
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-28
Updated: 2012-05-28
Packaged: 2017-11-09 15:02:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 7,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/456822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Qlippoth/pseuds/Abraxas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hexed at birth by Azula, Katara and her uncles/protectors flee and settle into a village to live as farmers. When she meets a stranger they embark on a crusade to fight crime as the Painted Lady and the Blue Spirit. But did she meet that stranger already? And what will happen when she learns of his identity? Loosely based on Sleeping Beauty with HPL. (written for the Zutara ficathon 2012)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Under the surface, a mile into the earth, that bleak arctic world transformed from winter to summer. It revealed an oasis: a garden encompassed by a lake, encased by a cavern. There, where neither moon nor sun existed, they did not need a torch to see....

Pakku led Katara through the garden, stopping only at that portion where a sliver of water fed into a pool.

"Who built it?" the girl asked of the withered cyclopean architecture - whose ruins arched out of the water, clung onto the cavern's natural wall.

"We do not know," the wizard replied. "Perhaps it was not built. Perhaps it was ... dreamt? Imagined into reality. Katara - the world we inhabit is ancient beyond description. We were not the first. We will not be the last."

Inside the water of the pool swam exactly two fish - white and yellow - encircled ceaselessly....

"Once upon a time I was your age and when my master brought me into this garden, a relic to our people, they were the same exact fish then. They are the same exact fish now. We do not pretend to understand, only to accept."

"They are ageless?" Katara froze. The fish inspired a swell of anxiety that the sanctuary itself could not. Why, exactly she did not know except that as they were elder they demanded awe. Into that void, away from the Universe, they carried their dance eternal. Suddenly, she was aware of a world with its own manner of being, wisdoms, and secrets ... a world where people were too small to matter. "They are the sun and the moon."

Pakku raised an eyebrow.

"Hmmm, the sun and the moon surrendered their immortality to be a part of this existence; however, I cannot believe they chose to be fish. I believe they roam here and there and that we may, by chance, encounter them from time to time."

Katara nodded - she uncorked a vial of pewter and brought it into the pool. It bubbled as air escaped and watered entered.

"You many need it to call the spirits."


	2. Chapter 2

Katara stretched and found the window - a chill of autumn seeped through that glass and continued its intrusion until she forced it shut. The sun was not risen. The moon, instead, greeted the girl. The sky worked by degrees into shades of twilight, its facade unscarred by cloud.

She breathed - and felt the stir of tea brew at the kitchen.

The girl moved about undisturbed by the chamber's lack of light - so committed to memory were its details. At length she reached the dresser and slid its topmost compartment. Contents chattered like an alarm.

Enough daybreak came into being to reveal images: fragments to be certain.

A necklace with a cameo. Where it came from, she could not say. It was not the kind of trinket her uncles would have inherited. Except - Pakku - yet she could not picture that crazy old wizard as a youth carving it for a bethroed; he was just always ancient.

Katara brought the ribbon with the cameo to her neck. Then, while about to shut the dresser, the sun shot a ray of light into its compartment. There was another object of affection. She clutched it, its band of red like fire, its seashell - a crude version of a water tribe cameo. She treasured it like no other gift. Even the sight of it stirred the memory of that night by the willows....

†  †  †  †

 

Below, the abode remained trapped by dawn. Tea bubbled atop a pile of coals. Its light glowed in and out of focus, revealing walls with features. A table. Two chairs - occupied.

A cup was raised to drink.

"The Avatar is coming," Jeong Jeong said at the side of the table. The tone was ever, ever fatalistic. The fire-bender was doubtless the committed pessimist of the trio. "Soon it will be time to go."

Katara froze - she watched the gestures emanating out of the men at the table.

"It is not a tragic occasion," Piandao, the swordsman, tried to assure.

She just could not shake the unfairness of it all. True - they moved a lot. She told herself again and again not to be too attached to the people they met.... But that farm was the longest they lived anywhere. And, of course, there was that 'situation' with the village.

"It is not like all of the other ... occasions ... we were forced to move," added Piandao.

"We've lived here seven long years. We've established - I've established - a place ... a life."

"That, boy, you mean," Jeong Jeong sighed.

Katara looked down, away. Yes, she replied, more in posture than in word. The men settled against their seats. They warned her not to be too friendly, especially with that newcomer to the Chen's plantation. Attachments would be used against them by their enemy. Already all of them sacrificed everything to protect the girl.

"That abomination - Azula - she stretches everywhere, she sees and knows, the only way to survive is to prepare," Jeong Jeong added: "With such corruption, what could be trusted?"

"It's just ... not fair," she eked, stifling a first and turning to the doorway.

Rage filled the void where a face used to be.

"It will be the last time we need to move, Katara," said Piandao.

"Where do we go?" Katara asked.

"South - to the Antarctic," Jeong Jeong replied.

Confused, the girl turned to the wizard and the swordsman. Already she knew she was of the Southern Water Tribe. Still, throughout, they roamed everywhere but that continent. The meanderings of their exile stretched even into the Fire Nation. But not the South Pole. Always they were running, fleeing the rumors of that witch. Why, suddenly, was it safe to return?

"Katara - what do you remember about your past?"

She answered Jeong Jeong: "Just the sites we visited. The air temple. The North Pole. Pieces of that dreadful island."

"What about before? Before all of that? Of your home?"

Aside travel and the bystanders coming in and out of their lives, there were memories that were more sensations than actions; there were a few persistent images....

"I recall - a wall of ice. Waves crashing against it. There's a field, rock, ice, otter-penguins. There's a boy, too, not of the tribe." Piandao nodded. "The Avatar.... He's showing us how to ride the otter-penguins." Jeong Jeong raised an eyebrow. "That boy." Vividly, she recalled the impression of their touch - the contrast of their hands, his ash to her umber, his thumb against her knuckles, the way it felt warmer than it should have.

"What else - anything - even if it seems to be a dream."

"The only other event," she paused to clutch the safety of her cameo.

Whispered Piandao: "of course, child, of course."

"An oily black snow falls. Chaos everywhere. I'm running through crowds. I'm going home. Nobody answers. A clamor and I smell smoke." Jeong Jeong shut his eyes as a tear welled. Piandao sighed. "Somebody appears and runs out of the house. I go deep, deep, deep.... I see a woman against the bed and she is not moving. I slip and there's blood everywhere."

The abode fell into silence.

"That was the day the Fire Nation attacked," Piandao stated.

"They took my mother, I know it."

"Perhaps by instinct you do. What you do not know - your father is Hakoda, Chieftain of the Southern Water Tribe, your mother was Lady Kya and you were their only daughter. The only water-bender in the Tribe and the continent. The first to be born that century."

"It was Azula who impelled that attack," Piandao continued that portion of history. "She plunged the world into disarray. She feeds off chaos. More - it is your power she craves - that is why she hexed you at birth."

"Hexed?" It was not enough that the truth of her identity was suppressed - now - now - to deal with a hex too?

"Katara needs to know.... We did not think much of Azula's hex. At first it felt like the ravings of a lunatic. That was until the attack. Since that time you have lived with us."

"But - what's different now?"

"By nightfall you will be sixteen and the curse will be lifted."

Katara shook - the water at the pot steamed. "Madness...." she staggered out of the house.

"She is right to be upset," Jeong Jeong tapped Piandao's shoulder. "We do nothing except drag her from place to place...."


	3. Chapter 3

The village beyond the farm was a dangerous place to be. It was not always so, certainly, when they arrived it was peaceful. An island of tranquility amid a sea of war. Until the ramifications of the war crept into their lives.

As Fire Nation armies roamed the countryside, engaging campaigns to destabilize the Earth Kingdom, pressing more and more men into service, a new and different corruption settled onto that oasis. It took root with the appearance of a regiment of soldiers. Ostensibly, to keep law and order while the men fought away, they proved to be a terror equal to the invaders.

Katara liked to be around the people, though, and the village happened to be where she met the Blue Spirit.

†  †  †  †

 

A traveler with a knife threatened a beggar while soldiers idled.

Furious at their contempt - and determined to teach that scoundrel a lesson Southern Water Tribe style - Katara followed that miscreant through the village, right into an alley. She stopped to produce a mask of white and red. She approached - then - the Blue Spirit jumped out of the sky with a mask and a blades.

The vigilante wore a mask of white and blue and brandished a set of blades. Undaunted she revealed a boomerang. Together they subdued the hoodlum.

For a moment, those two masked youths stood and stared while the miscreant groaned.

"You take the legs, I take the arms."

They dragged the man away, tying and stringing him up in front of the tavern where the soldiers drank.

Over the course of weeks, they met again and again - on rooftops, in alleys. All the while, their adventures as vigilantes grew bolder. Complete with dueling wanted posters. With each other, they kept their masks. The only wall to separate their identities. They practiced with each other too - she, a student of Piandao, taught a way spar, he taught the art of ninjitsu.

It was quite by accident that they unmasked themselves.

Katara worked at the cashbox at the store when a boy approached to pay for feed. She started to notice the way he fumbled with the coinage. The character of the movements was just too familiar. Still, Lee was a regular, enigmatic, yes, yet too shy and quiet to be a masked vigilante. She chuckled and almost dismissed the idea entirely....

Until the money swapped, and they touched hand to hand, and that familiarly could not be ignored - their eyes met and they froze.

"No.... Er," Lee tried to say something to reply Katara's change of demeanor.

Somebody shouted at the back of the line - a soldier. They jumped, startled only to continue the pretense of it. He paid and left. She kept looking, following with her eyes.

Pakku closed the shop and while the trio conversed, Katara snuck away. She headed to their intersection - another store whose roof was easy to access.

He stood, gazing at the moon.

She approached unmasked and without resistance allowed the Blue Mask to be yanked aside.

Lee's scar even at night was unmistakable.

Katara held a hand to it.

"How many times do we meet and yet not meet?" he asked, sinking his chin onto her shoulder.

†  †  †  †

 

Something was amiss.

A crowd gathered at the edge of the village. Along with a group of soldiers. Some were launching forward. Some were staggering backward. They were squared off with the Blue Spirit....

Katara pried free of the crowd. Out of sight, she fumbled with her sack for her mask and boomerang. Alas - thanks to that haste to escape the farm - she forgot the mask. With a sigh she tucked the weapon under a fold of tunic and moved back through the people.

A duo of soldiers stormed into the vigilante but the Blue Spirit swept them away with a flurry of swordsmanship.

The calculus was simple enough - she was not going to abandon her partner, masked or not masked, and ... anyway ... her time at that village was slated to end. So what if everyone knew of her secret now?

With the weapon ready, she jumped into the fracas.

"A farm girl? A farm girl wants to be the Painted Lady?" one of the soldiers bayed.

"That's right," she moved the weapon slowly and expertly across her face. "You bullies are just as rotten as the Fire nation. You're supposed to protect. Instead you torment."

"Shut up - savage!"

Enraged, the Blue Spirit lunged at the soldier, knocking him across the ground with a rapid succession of hits to the knees, the ribs, the face. Another solider dropped their weapon and retreated. Throughout the onslaught, he did not utter a word. The only sounds were those agonies groaned by the attackers.

Suddenly the soldiers regrouped and came at both of the fighters - the Blue Spirit and the Painted Lady, as Katara revealed by skill without question. They repelled the surge fighting back to back. That circle of attackers broke just as an arrow cracked through the air. Seeing it and its target align, Katara pushed the Blue Spirit out of the way, an act that took them both to the dirt.

"Katara, are you OK?" The Blue Spirit stood and helped the girl to her feet. What had been shock transformed into rage, though, as he caught the soldier ready another arrow. So focused indeed that he did not notice his mask fell off.

Now the crowd uttered its surprise - that spread like fire - Lee, the Chen's farmhand, Lee was the Blue Spirit.

Then the soldier launched the arrow but the Blue Spirit/Lee, unmasked and unaware of it, destroyed it with a blast of fire. Everyone - the crowd and the soldiers alike - were paralyzed by the sight of it. Katara felt her heart race - there was no return - no return for either of them anymore.

"Lee?" I don't think so - no - I know who you are!" taunted the captain. "You're no refugee. You're Zuko, the exiled Fire Nation prince!"

Stoked, the Blue Spirit lashed against the soldier with a mixture of fire and steel, a combination so beautiful and so dangerous that they fled like the cowards they always were. Even the crowd dispersed, confused as ever as to who the good and bad sides were....

"I am Zuko," he seethed, "son of Ozai and Ursa, exiled heir to an exiled throne."

Katara gulped - her hold of the boomerang loosened then tightened again as the fire-bender approached. Walking through flames impervious to their action. The Blue Spirit rehilted the blades while the Painted Lady scowled.

"You - HOW COULD IT BE YOU?"

"Wait, Katara!"

He reached to the girl but she fled....


	4. Chapter 4

Katara fled - Lee/Zuko followed.

Into a road. Across a stretch of forest. They ran through the farm-country.

At length gravel foamed into dirt - a trail well trod by foot evolved into view. Its edges were lined by twisted, gnarled roots. Trees of that region were large enough to cast an eternal kind of shade.

The girl stopped. Looking left to right she scanned those spaces between trees which aped the night with its foreboding. A raven cawed as it hopped awkwardly from root to root of a single fallen log.

The intrusion of that bird almost caused a scream.

The boy called distantly - and getting closer and closer.

She simply needed to get away. Gods, she should have known they could not be trusted. Jeong Jeong kept warning that fire-bending was a road to madness - she did not listen, she did not want to believe.... The art was so beautiful if so dangerous.... Lee or Zuko or whatever he was blinded her judgment.

Wandering a bit, she found a tree perfectly angled and jumped onto its trunk. She trekked into its canopy. And someway, somehow, along that climb, the boomerang slipped....

"Damn it."

How could it be? That he lied to me? she thought. She did not know her truth. He did and hid. Worse, he was the spawn of the monster that killed her mother.

Katara's heart skipped a beat as Lee/Zuko reached that part of the road.

"Katara!" he called but only the sway of trees replied. "Katara, I'm sorry," he sighed and rested onto a mossy, iridescent log, hands to face. "Please, don't run." It was more whispered than stated. Then, as he stood to continue, he spotted that boomerang atop of a bed of leaves.

†  †  †  †

 

The sense that they met already was a topic they breached often. Although Katara, not Zuko, tended to be vocal about it. It was just that he could not bring himself to reveal too much about the past. He loved the girl intensely. He knew the problem she faced with those of the Fire Nation. To reveal that he was a prince of that enemy? - he dreaded the consequence of that foolishness....

Iroh, fresh off the death of his son, adopted - informally - the newfound heir of the Fire Nation.

Ozai's ambitions were twisted by Azula - Ozai's usurpation only brought uncle and nephew closer together, however.

Iroh took Zuko on a tour of the world to get the boy away from that corruption. The war was not yet started and they were free to move with ease. They voyaged from pole to pole, right into the hall of the great southern chieftains. It was a family to be, as Iroh revealed the arrangement between the families - a marriage between fire and water bending offspring.

The memory of that visit was like the stirrings of another lifetime, a fevered dream.

The moments with that girl were few, fragmented. Perhaps her five to his seven? Their interactions felt tenuous. Thankfully, they were dotted by the Avatar. An ancient master of the elements guised as a youth - not unlike Azula's perpetual childhood.

Zuko recalled something about riding otter-penguins.

Was any of it real? he wondered.

The animals got angry and shook them off. They were laughing until they hit the ice. His brow was bruised - blood stained the snow. She kissed it - he felt warmth and the bleed stopped

†  †  †  †

 

Moonlight washed through the roof of the Chen's immense cotton shed. After saving their youngest from the soldiers, they rewarded the stranger with a few jobs at their plantation. Lee - as they called the stranger - retreated into their shed after work.

Within the cover of the night, the Blue Spirit and the Painted Lady joined to spar.

All of a sudden, the girl got the advantage, flipping the boy to the floor, anchoring his arms with her hands.

"What if I told you I was a bender?"

Katara blinked - Lee? A bender?

What sense did it make? He fought with swords, with skill and cunning. Those were the talents developed by a fighter without the ability to bend. Why, if he was gifted with that power, was it hidden? Of course, then, she recalled her own situation.

"Well, if you bend earth, that would be an advantage."

"It's not earth-bending."

There was such shame conveyed by the reply that she felt it as much as heard it.

"What could it be? Can't be air - only Aang does that. And you're not water-tribe."

A pause - broken....

"I - I fire-bend."

Katara slid off Lee. She put a hand to his face, to his scar. She turned his head until they met eye to eye.

"It changes nothing, you understand, I know it's not easy. To keep that a secret. You are not like the others. You are not a monster."

They met with a kiss - their hands searched and latched onto each other.

"I went to trust you...."

"The Fire Nation took everything from you. As it took everything from me. Azula corrupted my father - and took my mother."

The Painted Lady rested her chin against the Blue Spirit's shoulder.

"And there's something I need to confess, Lee."

Pakku would not approve. To protect her they isolated and disguised what she was. Those measures were instilled as paramount to keep from attracting attention. And Azula - but there, at length, she met another victim of that witch who also needed to hide.... Now - to breach the gap of understanding that persisted between them. Because only with the Blue Spirit was she free to be Katara.

"I'm a water-bender."

He blinked: "Really?"

"Yeah...."

Excitedly, they kissed again then burst into a childish fit of laughter.

"Look at this...."

Lee aimed a finger at a broom. A single line of fire sprang out of the tip. The flame widened into a swirl of plasma, displaying, like the feathers of a bird, a wild mixture of colors. The flame licked the broom and impelled its wood to burn.

"Are you afraid, Katara?"

"No!"

Katara gazed about the shed. The call of water was strong - it was there waiting to be felt. With a smirk, she found it. A pail: its contents leapt up into the air and onto the broom.

"Do you feel it - the call of your element - when it's near?"

"I do - it's just like it becomes a part of you, doesn't it?"

She smiled and sighed - at last, she found another who felt that call too! - bending seemed to open yet another realm of intimacy.

"Then - then I'm not crazy - Lee ... I'm not crazy!"

†  †  †  †

 

Katara watched Zuko wander off with the boomerang.

For a while she relived the passions of the nights that followed - right into the wispy flowered strands of willow where he gifted that seashell cameo, a physical expression of the secrets they shared. It was a night she almost did not return to home at all.

She accepted his fire-bending. Why was it so hard to accept the rest? He was not responsible for the attack and the rest of what followed. Gods, he was a child, too. And he was not a villain. Like Jeong Jeong and Piandao, Fire Nation men she loved, he used his power for good not for evil.

Katara fisted at the bark realizing that she had been unfair.

It was the last they could be together. Certainly, now that the truth had been revealed.... He too could not remain at the village. She leapt off the tree and followed the trail toward the Chen's cotton plantation.


	5. Chapter 5

Zuko reached the doorway after crossing an acre of wheat. The exiled prince was unfamiliar with the abode: only ever catching glimpses of it at night. He paused afraid of what awaited. The uncles did not strike him as the forgiving type. But it was slated to be his last day around that village. And there would not be another chance to make amends with Katara.

Even without a knock his appearance was acknowledged - the doorway parted and a tall, wizened figure dressed by furs stood at the threshold.

"Yes?" asked Pakku.

Zuko composed himself and displayed the boomerang.

"It belongs to Katara," he said.

"Actually, it belongs to me...."

The boy gulped: "She dropped it in the forest. Anyway, I need to speak with her. I need to apologize to her."

"Katara - what was she doing with it?" The wizard seized the weapon. "Who are you?"

"I am Zuko," he replied.

Suddenly to the doorway came a sage topped by a mop of white.

"Let the boy enter, Pakku."

"We all know who it is, Pakku," said another still unknown and unseen figure within the abode.

Both the wizard and the sage stepped aside while that other enshadowed man motioned to come and enter deep into the house.

Within, the parlor plunged into a shade of abyss tempered only by the scant daylight that filtered through windows. Clearly, every attempt to protect the interior from the exterior was taken. As for what the dimness revealed: the house was at best a kind of work in progress. Everywhere, too, were items at various stages of packing.

Piandao and Jeong Jeong beckoned their visitor to take a seat.

"I don't mean to upset anyone. Katara and I have been friends a while." Zuko started unprompted. "She and I are the Painted Lady and the Blue Spirit." The uncles, seated about the boy, listened attentively. "I love Katara. Oh, gods, you're going to kill me. I'm a fire-bender. She's a water-bender. But we never used those powers openly - until today -we fought the soldiers unmasked today. And everyone knows...."

"You are the prince of the Fire Nation.... What we do not understand is why are you here?"

"Where came that scar?"

Pakku remained silent.

"It was thanks to Azula. I don't know when it started. Maybe after my uncle lost his son? That witch worked on my father. She filled his mind with ideas and ambitions. She demanded a ritual where I was supposed to be sacrificed. My mother discovered it and got in the way of the fire. The flames went through her and burnt my face. I don't recall what happened after that - the capitol was filled with chaos - somehow my uncle took me away."

"Of course, Azula, it wasn't just Katara she was after. You were both to be sacrificed," Pakku concluded.

"The raiders were sent hastily to the South Pole. To kill their only water-bender. They didn't know who it was, exactly, and just like Ursa, Kya sacrificed herself." Piandao concluded.

"I - I don't understand -"

Pakku interrupted: "Young man, that girl, Katara, is your bethroed."

Zuko froze.

"Sixteen years ago a child was born to Chief Hakoda and the Lady Kya. When it was discovered that she was a water-bender and when the Avatar declared her to be the most powerful of the generation, the first born at the South Pole in a century, Ozai and Hakoda agreed to marry their offspring as a gesture of unity. They held a festival to mark that agreement. Jeong Jeong and I, Master Pakku and the Avatar - as well as you and your parents - attended that feast."

†  †  †  †

 

The great hall, adorned by the rarest, finest furs, reveled at the peak of activity.

Hakoda raised a cup to toast when all of a sudden the threshold burst ope. A wintry cold air stoked the lights almost to extinction. A shadow formed itself and out of that emerged - Azula!

The Avatar jumped into position between that abomination and the infants.

The malevolence cloaked by the guise of a girl no older than Aang approached the children with impunity. She smirked at Zuko. She tilted at Katara.

"So ... this is what the ruckus is about?"

Aang raised himself with effortless bending.

"I warn you, Azula, whatever you do I'll do to you a thousand times!"

"Tut. Tut." She smiled at the boy who was not a boy as she was not a girl. "And what do you imagine I am to do with children? Harm? When adults are so much easier to corrupt! No - it won't be I. No, I'm going to rejoice and give our little Katara ... a gift."

"You are not invited, Azula, you do not have power," Hakoda intoned and men of both elements stood at the ready.

"Oh, just look at you all. So.... So unified," she mocked.

A chill stiffer than whisper froze the blood.

"Fools, laugh to scorn, as if I could be defeated by the spawn of men .... we - we who were, are, and will be forever? Don't you worry, Hakoda, precious, precious little Katara is safe. She'll travel the world. She'll go from pole to pole with ease. Then, on the eve of her sixteenth year of life, she will prick her finger on the needle of a spinning wheel and there, there, there she will taste the power of blood-bending!"

A gasp echoed out of the revolted hall.

"What kind of lunacy is this?"

†  †  †  †

 

Pakku shut his eyes: "Blood-bending - it is vampirism...."

"Madness - we did not think anything of it other than just the ranting of a madwoman. We did not realize the extent of her scorn of humanity. The plots - and plots within plots - to overthrow the order that governs this world and therefore defeat the Avatar - the only force capable of opposing the terror she intends to unleash. Azula's power - it comes from chaos and discord. From upending the Natural. It was not until the Fire Nation attacked that her ambition came into focus."

"Then Azula must be destroyed," Zuko said, "Katara and I - we can take her down. It wasn't just random chance that she targeted us. Or that we met again. It's our powers that witch fears. Somehow we know what it takes to defeat her."


	6. Chapter 6

What started a cool, autumn day ebbed into night.

That shed the Chen used to store cotton was filled with a scent of cedar. Little sense of activity was revealed outside or inside save the appearance of nearly harvested yarn.

Katara feared Lee/Zuko left too soon. As she ventured into the shed, she felt a knot of emotion. It seemed that sadness and regret filled the Universe. She held on to the hope all would be well. She loved Lee/Zuko, who or what he was did not matter.

A ladder allowed access to the attic of the shed.

She ambled by rows and columns cotton - there, already, the Chen transformed their crop into thread.

A sound assaulted the ear - it was not the creak of the floor - it was a bird perched at a sill.

She found a lamp and lit it with flint. Armed against the night she wandered deeper into the lair. The raven cawed every so often agitated as she approached a certain area of the shed. With the light, though, it lost completely its power to startle.

It was then that Katara noticed it - a spinning wheel.

Almost shrieking. Almost dropping the lamp. Why - she could not fathom it. What urged the fear? The way the light fell onto its details? The way the flicker lent its shape suggestions of other worldly terror? What magic did that night impart to inspire such a profound dread of an object all too familiar?

Madness! The effect was spurred simply by its ancientness. Its immensity. Its rugged and rustic facade. All of that conspired to swell a shock but at the end, it was only a spinning wheel....

Yet, as she resettled, without averting the eyes to study it, there was something wrong with that instrument.

The air rushed through the cracks of the walls and kicked the instrument - it rocked back and forth - the gestures of the bird only added to the foreboding sense of doom.

"Ridiculous, Katara, it's just a spinning wheel."

Determined to get over that fear, she approached it. She lay hand atop wheel and gave a push. Spinning. Spinning. Spinning. Effortlessly, it lapped a revolution. Another hand applied at its rim and its motion stopped.

A string was slack about its axis where it spooled. She followed that line to its needle. She jolted as it pricked a finger. The raven slipped away and the lamp replied with a flicker of its own. She gazed at the finger where it was hit - a single drop of blood bubbled out of the wound. It swelled and its shape collapsed into a stream. Although it stung it did not hurt too much; indeed, it took a moment to register that it was her very own blood.

Always it was other people's blood.

Katara stared at the puncture transfixed. The call! Water - water had to be within blood.... The call! - it could not be suppressed - it gained volume like an avalanche. How did it escape notice? The sensation must have been too weak or drowned by the rest of a world full of water to notice.

Still ... there it was, all along.

As it circulated through the body, the urge to bend become like the crashing of waves that intensified with each and every throb.

Overwhelmed, she staggered away from the spinning wheel. It felt as if her knees were going to buckle and fail. What would be the danger? If it was water then it was water. Flesh was earth. Spirit was fire. Lungs filled with air. Why the shock that blood was water....

†  †  †  †

 

When Zuko and Katara's uncles arrived at the shed they were met by the incomprehensible - thankfully it remained with most of its madness nixed by shadow.

The roof of the shed cracked. It split and tumbled off as if carried away by a storm. Out of that jagged wound of lumber it left behind there emerged the wings of a serpent.

"Katara!" Zuko jumped off the ostrich-horse and rushed into the shed.

"Wait, Zuko, it's too dangerous." Pakku implored.

The exiled prince went boldly into the edifice. Looking up the ladder, starlight revealed the extent of damage that she suffered.

Zuko roared, calling to Katara - it was too late....

At the top of the ladder, he caught the sight of that dragon launching itself wholly into the air. He sent a fireball - it did not scorch the hide.

The beast escaped with Katara clutched to its talons enveloped within a cage of light.


	7. Chapter 7

The Avatar, at the neck of the bison, steered toward the west.

Above, the sky was abysmal - its clashes of vapors - inspired a nightmare of storm. Below, the ocean - its frantic, chaotic waves - evoked a reflection of tempest. They could not say where the first ended and the last began.

Nature was awry at a cosmic level of action. Aang felt that creep immediately into existence with Katara's abduction. As they advanced toward Azula that evidence of disruption became more and more physical. Especially with the sun and the moon - their shapes were corrupted into an expression of madness. Indeed, all throughout the world, everything was distorted as if the very fabric of reality were coming apart.

The Avatar wasted no time - the ultimate threat to balance was approaching its climax.

"At last, the fortress - good work, Appa!" Pakku declared.

The bison roared.

The group at the back of the flyer faced to the side. Lightning revealed the structure atop the island - gloom compacted into a cyclopean material form, which froze the blood simply to gaze at it.

"Things.... Things come there to die," Zuko observed.

Appa circled and ascended onto the island's coast. It was a rocky, oily sludge. Mixed within were refuse coughed out of the ocean's upheaval.

"Remember: Azula must be destroyed," Aang said to the assembled wizards and warriors. "We are out of alternatives. And you know what to do," he added at Zuko.

The exiled prince nodded.

A clamor of chains signaled a reply from the fortress. The gate was parting. The defenders were amassing. The White Lotus Order, lead by the Avatar, rushed to meet Azula's earth-bending defenders.

It was Aang, eyes aglow, who spearheaded the offense. Piandao and Jeong Jeong combined their skills to mow through the ghouls. Pakku used the abundance of water to offset the advantages of the earth-benders.

Amid that ruckus, the machinations of Zuko were not noticed.

Stepping aback. Moving aside. Remaining enshadowed as he lurked toward the castle. He enacted a plan formed at the spot. He studded the walls for any kind of breach capable of access into the structure.

†  †  †  †

 

Azula worked at a table upon which was a chart.

"What could it be? My old friend, the Avatar, pays a visit?"

The sorceress stood and ambled into the rear of the study. At the oblong metal basin where Katara - encased by light - persisted through a state of vegetation. Only a consciousness devoid of faculty and neither awake nor asleep.

"Soon the arcana will be complete and the sun and the moon will be consumed ... by me.... With their powers infused, I will be equal to the Avatar." She paused as if to contemplate possibilities heretofore unthinkable. Why stop at the Avatar? Why not reach to be the greatest of existence? Great enough to overthrow the Ancient Ones ... the First Ones ... oh, what delightful blasphemy! "As for your Zuko...."

The witch smirked and vanished into a corridor.

A rat squealed as she stepped by its tail.

Katara heard it. She sensed everything but could not utter a reply. With all of her might she tried to scream yet not a breath slithered out of her lips. It was maddening how total the paralysis appeared to be. The frustration, though, steeled and did not discourage the resolve to escape the spell.

Yet it was impossible to escape directly.

Only the eyes were spared that inability to move. She scanned the chamber. She felt the call of water. It was there, there, there she was certain of it. An oasis of water. Although she could not find a source of it.

A rat climbed atop the desk - it sat to brush its whiskers.

With a thought, she reached its blood. She dragged it toward the cage of light. She looked away even as she squeezed the blood of the animal. A screech followed - then - a sizzle - then a flicker. The cage was not impervious!

She just needed more ... more rats....

†  †  †  †

 

Zuko approached a courtyard.

The sky glazed with a bloody tint as the sun and the moon unveiled their faces. They were twisted and swollen beyond reason. The earth itself shivered at what became of its companions.

At the distance a cloud burst then spread into a shatter of mist. He grabbed and crossed the blades in front of his face and neared, closer and closer, ready until at the last possible moment he paused. The wind stirred that mist and gradually it took a shape....

Crowned by chaos was Azula.

†  †  †  †

 

At last, the light consumed the blood and itself. With a final sizzle, it extinguished and Katara tumbled into the basin atop the remains of the rats. She screamed at the garish sensation of it. But she gasped, breathed. And out of that gained a taste of movement. Freed of the cage there remained a weakness - the blood-bending employed to escape infected her in spirit and in flesh. That upending of Nature killed parts of her.

Rising, she writhed, body numbed, limbs burned and ached. She shuffled out of the basin and on to the floor - then crawled at the table. She reached and climbed in to its assortment of alchemy.

A book of signs ope to an obscure chapter - its pages screaming with lunacies conjured by prophets of another age. At the corner was the pewter filled with the kiss of the oasis. The spirits remained! She retook it then flung the table aside, scattered its arcana.

"It'll get better, better, better," she said of that condition like a mantra.

Still unrecovered, she clamored toward a window, out of which flashed bolts of blue and red.

†  †  †  †

 

"Come. Come. Zuko, you do intend to destroy me?" Azula taunted with a spray of fire.

Zuko dropped, rolled and fled the fire. Still volleying, as it were, he launched another shot at the witch. Undaunted, the target simply caught that fire and absorbed it.

"Damn it...."

Azula cackled as she came into the courtyard, parrying then deflecting, Zuko's fire.

"Iroh taught you well. You mastered fear yet you do not use it. Let that rage consume you, you spawn of woman, only madness can destroy me!"

"Zuko!" Katara shouted - the duelists were startled.

"Impossible...."

"Katara," Zuko launched the boomerang at the woman - who caught it mid-air.

"Fools! Not even bending save you now - now behold the madness to come!"

The earth shook as the sun and the moon shed pieces into the sky. The air swirled about Azula, enveloping her with its tendrils of smoke. Instinctively Katara and Zuko drew into each other, their aim focused onto the witch. A veil of onyx surged upward and outward, then, vanishing - they realized a change had been invoked by that abomination.

Azula was transformed - or - was it revealed? Unconfined by a body of a child, what was exposed, then and there, it was a monster unlike any other. The body unwound as a sleek, reptilian shape with flesh like obsidian. The head sprouted, inflating as if unfolding, out of a void into a mass of writhing, throbbing tentacles.

"I sense a weakness, woman," it spoke although they could not yet see anything like a mouth amid that entanglement. "Is that the taint of blood-bending?"

The Moloch that used to be Azula parted its tendrils and they gazed at the orb of eyes and the beak darting in and out of the skull.

It oped that beak to launch a ball of fire. At Katara - Zuko jumped into the path.

With the blades crossed in front of his face, he deflected that onslaught and launched a blast of fire. Lightning lashed at itself as it pulsated red to blue. Their struggle of will heightened. Their fire met at the center then gradually, gradually his red overtook her blue. All the while, that fight dragged Zuko across the courtyard and knocked Azula against the wall. When the fight ceased their display crashed with a sound like thunder.

Smoke came out of Azula....

Zuko collapsed in front of Katara - the blades were molten and sizzled into the dirt.

Katara flung the boomerang at the monster - Azula caught it at the beak. It was enough to divert attention - as she extended her reach of consciousness.

The Moloch's tentacles tried, frantically, to reach its beak. Smoke sprayed out of the gap of the mouth like an eruption. Otherwise, undirected, that fire did not pose a threat.

Katara did not relent - Azula was not invincible. As it was, come fully into their world, that abomination made itself susceptible to mortality. Yet to attack with blood-bending consumed as it destroyed. Was that what it counted with? Was it that Azula - itself incapable of understanding anything beyond a quest for power - did not calculate Katara's force of will nor the ability to self-sacrifice?

Katara was weakening - with what remained of strength she dragged the Moloch onto a marsh where rain pooled into a moat. She pressed Azula into that water. The rest that followed was lost to what felt like an eternity filled with mud and smoke.

A shriek gurgled upward and with that, she did not feel resistance anymore.

Azula grayed and disintegrated as if millions of years of suppressed age burst forth at once.

Katara lifted Zuko.

"Are you OK?" he asked.

She stifled but could not contain the tear and coughed a mouth of blood.

"No," she confessed.

He raised his hand to her face. "I'm sorry ... I didn't tell you...."

"I'm sorry, too, Zuko."

The storm passed yet neither the sun nor the moon was restored - the arcana brought forth by that witch was not yet defeated.

"Do you feel their call, Katara? They await us...."

She stopped his lips with a kiss.

"Then, let us go to...."

She brought the vial. He uncorked the pewter.

†  †  †  †

 

With the death of their master the defenders ceased to be - they crumbled into the dirt they had been summoned out of.

The wizards rushed into the fortress and caught a glimpse - a burst of light - it stretched into the sky. When they reached the source of it, they found nothing. Nothing save that vial of pewter and a pair of bands - one water tribe style, one a fiery imitation of it. As they watched, the trinkets pulverized and were swept away by the air.

Of the scattered ash, the swordsman uttered a eulogy: "Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream?"

Aang looked above - the sun and the moon, restored, looked below.

END


End file.
